What Happens to CS:GO’s Map Pool after Operation Hydra Ends?
Operation Hydra will go down in CS:GO history as the longest operation to date. With an end date of November 13th, the operation will have run for just under six months, launching on May 23rd, 2017. This won't be...
Worlds 2017: The Six Best Plays of the Group Stage
What makes a good play? Is it mechanically remarkable? Strategically innovative? Maybe the best plays are the most exciting plays. Or in a case like Worlds, where teams ebb and flow and the metagame narrows as the tournament runs...
Four Quick Tips for Reviewing League of Legends Replays
In 2017, Riot Games has given you all the tools. Gone are the days of 'lolreplay bug splat' errors. If you somehow missed the forty million memos: we have in-client replays. Joe wrote an article a few weeks ago...
Is Patch 9.1 Giving Us Hearthstone’s “Healthiest” Meta?
After Hearthstone's recent balance changes in Patch 9.1, the game's meta has shifted drastically. Currently there is a deck from every class in tier 1-2. That’s right, every single class has a playable deck. This is the first time...
Interview with Dotabuff Co-Founder Sabina “Lawliepop” Hemmi
It’s hard to find a Dota 2 player who hasn’t used the popular game analysis platform Dotabuff. Dotabuff, and its counterpart Overbuff, pull statistics and information from your games and let users parse through the data. I sat down with Sabina...
Why Mandatory Teamwork Is Unhealthy for Multiplayer Games
I’ve recently started to notice a phenomenon in competitive gaming. It’s something I saw in League of Legends years ago, and was reminded of in brutal soul-crushing fashion last week when I played Destiny 2's PvP mode. In the...
The Worst League of Legends Merchandise on the Internet
I already hate most fan merch, but how do I separate the truly “bad” from just “stuff I don’t like?” After searching for every type of knick-knack and article of clothing, I discovered that half of all bad League...
Trial by Fire: How Valve Could Improve Dota 2’s Tutorial
Dota is a punishing game for newcomers, and the lackluster tutorial doesn't make learning the basics of the game any easier. The current tutorial is an improvement from the pre-7.00 version, which used an outdated version of the map...
Why Is the StatTrak Music Kit Even a Thing?
It's the common knowledge of any CS:GO fan by now that Valve has made some less-than-sensible updates to the game. Two good examples of this would be the update that introduced the broken R8 revolver and messed with the recovery time...
The Best Dota 2 Merchandise: Gifts for Gamers
Physical merchandise often seems to be an afterthought when it comes to online multiplayer games. Unlike Mario and Pokemon, which have been heavily merchandised by Nintendo, League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, CS:GO, and Team Fortress 2 have...
The Best High Skill Ceiling Hearthstone Decks
Recently, we discussed what skill ceilings and skill floors are. One of the things we touched on in the article was that Hearthstone, because of the emphasis on deck creation, is home to plenty of viable decks that have an...
Picks and Bans at Worlds 2017: Group Stage Meta Predictions
The emerging Worlds 2017 meta is more diverse than we expected. Using preliminary play-in data (pre-October), we've seen 63 unique champion picks, compared to 56 picks in the entirety of last year’s World Championships. We can expect to see...